Omnichannel Customer Support: The Complete Guide for 2025

Customer expectations have been shifting (and increasing) dramatically over the past few years.

In fact, 66% of consumers now expect brands to understand their unique needs and expectations — a number Salesforce highlighted in 2024.

Also, 86% of customer support agents report that expectations are rising, while 53% of customers expect brands to predict their needs before they explicitly ask.

Today, brands are judged not solely on the quality of their product and how well it’s priced. They are also evaluated on the experience they provide when their customers interact with them. 

This evaluation is not restricted to one or two touchpoints; it’s across the board. It can be how well the interaction goes on live chat, how quickly a query is responded to via email, or based on the consistency of follow-ups or key updates after an order is placed. 

That said, research from Salesforce shows that 55% of customers feel that they are talking to disconnected teams. They are also unhappy about the fact that they have to repeat information every time they speak to a new representative. 

So how do you address this expectation gap in an era when one bad interaction is enough to lose a customer? The answer is omnichannel customer support.

This blog will break down what omnichannel customer service is, why you need it, and how to implement it to meet the needs of the hour, i.e, exceptional customer experience. 

What Is Omnichannel Customer Service?

Omnichannel customer service is an approach to customer service where all your customer support channels are connected and work as one cohesive unit. This means that every interaction with a customer, be it via email, live chat, or call, is now treated as one continuous conversation. 

This is very different from a multi-channel support setup. While both provide multiple avenues for customers to contact you, in a multi-channel setup, each interaction is treated as an isolated interaction.

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Here is a simple real-world example that highlights the crucial difference between the two: a customer reaching out to a brand via email regarding an issue. They wait for a while, and since the email has not been responded to, they decide to use the live chat to get a faster resolution. 

Now, if the brand has a multi-channel support system, the customer will have to re-explain the entire scenario in the live chat. With an omnichannel system, the chat agent will see the customer’s email and know exactly what the issue is, and proceed with helping them.

This tiny detail can make a world of difference in what a customer experiences when interacting with a brand. Here is a more concrete comparison of the two. 

Why Businesses Need Omnichannel Customer Support Today

The reality of today is that you can no longer treat customer service as a secondary function. It is now a part of the overall customer experience, and this matters to customers. A 2025 report on CX from Ipsos has found that 70% of customers today pick a brand based on the expectations of a good overall customer experience. 

Gaining customers is just the first step; once you convert a customer, the next challenge is to retain them. Zendesk’s report shows that over 50% of customers simply switch to a competitor after a single bad experience with a brand. So, even if you have a phenomenal product, a single instance of your customer service not meeting expectations can cost you a loyal customer. 

All of the above have to be taken into consideration, given the fact that the cost of acquiring new customers is also on the rise. This number stands at about 25% across 19 out of 23 industries, according to the Google Ads Benchmark report.  

What Are the Core Benefits of Omnichannel Customer Service?

On a practical level, the implementation of an omnichannel customer service approach will give you the following core benefits. 

1. The Ability to Personalize Every Interaction

Personalized interactions are now the expectation, and 84% customers prefer companies that offer them, according to a report by Hyken. Deloitte has found that brands that invested more in personalization indeed performed better than their peers. 

The positive impact of brands that invest in personalization

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An omnichannel customer service approach will give you the ability to anticipate a customer’s needs and personalize every interaction, as everything is interconnected. 

2. Be Consistent Across All Touchpoints

Customers don’t think in terms of channels and don’t gauge interactions accordingly. As far as they are concerned, they want the same quality of service regardless of how they are reaching out to you. An omnichannel setup helps you achieve that. 

3. Faster Resolutions

Customers don’t like waiting and certainly don’t want to repeat themselves every time they are passed onto a different person or channel. With every agent having a full background of every interaction, they will be able to resolve issues faster, i.e, reduced Average Handling Time (AHT).

4. Improved Agent Productivity

Faster resolutions mean agents can handle more queries per shift, which translates directly to improved productivity. 

5. The Ability to Gather Better CX Insights 

Perhaps the most important benefit of an omnichannel setup is that you can run analytics across all touchpoints.

With no data being siloed, you get better visibility into the current state of your customer service and your CX performance overall. This improved visibility will help you streamline your customer outreach, thus giving you a competitive advantage. 

How Omnichannel Customer Support Works

Let’s look at a hypothetical customer’s journey, along with how technology works behind the scenes. 

1 . A customer wants information on an order that is delayed. They start by sending a “Hi” to the organization’s support number on WhatsApp. 

2. An AI assistant immediately kicks into action, acknowledges the customer, and captures their intent. If required, it asks one or two more follow-up questions and tags the issue, which gets recorded in the CRM. 

3. Simultaneously, the CRM then creates a ticket (or updates an existing one if this is a follow-up) with everything discussed so far. A routine engine then analyzes the intent and the priority of the case and then assigns it to the first available agent with the required skillset. For this case, assume it’s a live chat. 

4. This agent now has a full history of the case. The minute the ticket is assigned, it starts assisting the customer right away. If the system has AI baked into it, then it suggests the most apt replies to assist the customer in real-time. 

5. In the event the issues require a conversation over the phone, the next agent receives the transcript of the current conversation, along with all the history, via a warm transfer. 

6. When the agent resolves the issue, they update the ticket. The system then automatically triggers a confirmation message followed by a short survey. If the same customer ever reaches out again, regardless of the medium, the next agent assigned to this case will see the entire history of this case. 

From the business’s perspective, every interaction can be analyzed to see if the AI’s responses can be improved or if the routing rules need to be tweaked. 

What are the  Top Challenges in Implementing Omnichannel Customer Service?

Implementing omnichannel customer support comes with its challenges, but it’s entirely achievable. Knowing what obstacles to expect helps you prepare in advance. Here are the most common ones businesses face –

1. Fragmented Data and Legacy Systems

Omnichannel customer service requires all your systems and data to be connected to function effectively. Legacy tech that stores data in proprietary formats or doesn’t talk to other systems is the most common hurdle businesses face when attempting to go down the omnichannel route. 

2. Modernization/Integration Costs

To overcome the previous problem, you have to invest in new APIs, middleware, or develop a custom solution from scratch. These costs can be significant, especially if you are attempting to get legacy tools to connect with modern cloud-based tools. An alternative is to overhaul your systems altogether. 

3. Agent Training and Adoption

Once you invest in a new system or implement workarounds, train your agents to work with these new workflows efficiently. Resistance to change is always a challenge when it comes to overhauling systems or new workflows. Proper training is the only solution to overcome this, which is again a time and resource-heavy process. 

4. Channel Prioritization

The final challenge businesses face (but don’t really need to) is attempting to bring every channel into the fold in one go. Going down this route too soon will stretch your resources thin and impact the quality of services you offer, which is counterproductive. Businesses should first focus on channels where their customers are and then bring in additional channels into the omnichannel umbrella. 

What Are the Best Practices to Follow to Deliver Exceptional Omnichannel Customer Support?

The aforementioned points will help you smooth out the transition to an omnichannel customer support setup; the following points will help you get the most out of it thereafter. 

1. Start With Customer Journeys, Not Channels

If you focus on optimizing our support only from the lens of the individual channels, you will miss out on spotting service gaps. To get the most out of an omnichannel setup, you should also look at the common paths customer journeys take when they reach out to you.

This way, you will understand at what point customers switch channels or end up having to repeat themselves. It will help you smooth out the customer’s experience throughout their journey. 

2. Use Technology to Your Advantage 

Let the chatbots and agentic AI do the heavy lifting. Simultaneously, have guardrails in place using automation to loop in a human agent the moment the requests get too complex. Always give human agents the capability to override or correct the bots as needed.   

3. Use Sentiment Tracking and Real-Time Analytics

Always monitor live interactions to catch and address issues as they happen. Use. sentiment analysis (the automated guardrail mentioned earlier) to detect and analyze where customers get frustrated and adjust your parameters accordingly. 

4. Tailor Your Setup Based on Industry Needs

Your omnichannel support infrastructure and workflow should be set up based on the specific needs of the industry you are in.

For example, an organization in the retail sector will have a completely different set of priorities and customer needs when compared to, say, an organization in the banking or travel sector.

Kapture CX addresses this through its vertical-specific CX approach, which connects all your channels and adjusts workflows based on industry-specific priorities. The outcome is the ability to deliver consistent yet personalized services while improving the agent’s efficiency simultaneously. 

5. Continuous QA and Feedback Loops

The above activity should not be a one-time exercise. All interactions should be audited frequently. You should also continually gather feedback from your customers as well as agents. The results of the audits, combined with the feedback, should be used to refine everything from your bot’s responses to the agents’ training and your workflows. 

Real-World Implementations of Omnichannel Support

Here are two real-world implementations of omnichannel customer support. 

1. L’Oréal

L’Oreal, a brand that needs to be introduced, needed a way to ensure that every customer had a unique interaction with their brand, along with top-notch support. They unified their data from over 200 websites that helped them deliver unmatched levels of personalization and support, no matter which channel they were on. 

2. Syfe

Syfe, a fintech company based in Singapore, saw its services scaling rapidly. This resulted in a surge of customer queries across all their channels. They switched to an omnichannel support system that allowed them to address all queries across all channels easily, even when scaling to 100,000+ users. 

3. M2M Ferries

M2M Ferries was facing challenges in managing high volumes of bookings, cancellations, and queries across all its channels. With the help of Kapture, they implemented an omnichannel system that easily integrated with their existing system and allowed them to deliver the premium travel experience they aimed for. 

Future of Omnichannel Customer Support in the AI Era

With customer expectations showing no signs of slowing down, brands are working overtime to keep up. This is what the future of CX is shaping up to be: 

• Increased adoption of Agentic AI – One technology that is already taking over is Agentic AI, which Gartner predicts will autonomously handle 80% of all customer service issues by 2029.  
• Proactive Support: AI will help brands provide proactive support, for example, when an order is delayed or if a customer is searching for specific information on products. This kind of anticipatory engagement will go a long way in nipping frustration in the bud. 
• Hyperpersonalization and visibility: An omnichannel setup gives brands full visibility across every interaction, enabling them to take personalization — whether in support or proactive engagement — to new heights. Solutions like Kapture’s vertical CX platform, with pre-built industry workflows, agentic orchestration, and browser automation, make this possible at scale. Together, these capabilities empower businesses to deliver hyperpersonalized experiences that not only improve CX but also strengthen loyalty and long-term growth.

Building Omnichannel CX as a Growth Engine

The formula for cracking exceptional support today is simple: you need to find a way to blend technology with emotion. An omnichannel customer support setup is the best way to achieve this. In an era where CX is the key driver to success, adopting this approach is a sure shot way to success. 

This is where solutions like Kapture CX come in. Platforms built with agentic AI and vertical-specific CX workflows can help brands connect every channel, streamline operations, and deliver hyperpersonalized support at scale. With the right partner, omnichannel CX doesn’t just improve service — it becomes a true growth engine.

Book a demo with us to see what we are capable of and how we can help you. 

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